I snuck a copy of that book from my grandpa's house last year. I also picked up an out of print copy of "Oregon's Great Basin Country" from my Great Aunt's house. It seems the best books on this area were printed 30-40 years ago. One unique thing about the the Steens Mountain book is heft of each individual page, they dont make em like that anymore.

I have fished man lake and spent a lot of time around this area with my Dad. I love seeing some of the places in your pictures. Me and my Father had quite a falling out in my youth and much of the repairing of the damage was done driving all over this country. this place has a lot of special meaning for me. Again great page.

I ended up going to the Sawtooths last week rather than Steens because the road does not open until 31July. On the way back home, we drove through Burns and we could see Steens off to the south and it still had a tremendous amount of snow on it. I am not sure how it manages to retain that much snow after everything else has melted off but it was impressive. While we did skip most of eastern Oregon this trip, we did manage to spend the night at Strawberry Lake. That is a pretty amazing spot too.

We did not go by the lake. We were trying to make Shasta from the Sawooths in one day, so we did not stop anywhere on the way back. It turned out to be an easy trip: 10.5 hours of driving time. It takes us that long to reach our family's cabin at Courtright in the Sierra. We did go by Abert and Goose Lakes and they were both full. The Abert Rim is pretty awesome too!